Remedies, recipes and domestic life

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Month: August 2013

The recipes collected in the books and bundles of papers that I’m researching weren’t only for culinary and medicinal recipes – they ranged over various household activities as well, as I have addressed before in this blog. One area I’ve now seen covered for the first time is knitting. Here’s a ‘recipe’ for ‘little children’s lambswool shoes’:

Cast 17 stitches. Knit 1 row plain. Add a stitch at both ends every other row, till you have 23 stitches. Knit 1 row plain. Add a stitch at the end only, every other row till you have 28 stitches.

Knit 1 row plain. Knit off 16 stitches leaving 12 upon the other pin. Knit 16 rows or 8 pearl. Cast 12 stitches. Knit 2 rows plain. Diminish a stitch only at the end of every other row till you have 23 stitches.

Knit 1 row plain. Diminish a stitch at both ends every other row till you have 17 stitches. Cast off. Fasten on for the ancle. Make 30 stitches including the 12 on the pin. Knit 3 pearls of white, then 4 of colour, then 4 of white then 4 of colour. Cast off.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Knitter Asleep.

And the adults are catered for too, for example here’s how to make lambswool dressing shoes:

Cast 40 stitches. Knit 1 row plain. Add 1 stitch only at one end every other row till you have 50 stitches. Knit 10 rows plain. Cast off 25 stitches for the heel. Knit 10 rows for the toe. Cast on 25 stitches for the other side. Knit 10 rows plain. Diminish 1 stitch at one end only, every other row till you have 40 stitches left. Knit 1 row plain. Cast off. Fasten on for the ancle making 50 stitches round, knit 16 rows. Cast off. Sew it up on the wrong side, & then put on a duffield sole.

They look remarkably similar to modern patterns, although (like recipes for food or medicine at the time) they do require some prior knowledge that isn’t spelled out. For example, ‘Knit 16 rows or 8 pearl’ means (I think!) either 16 rows of knit or 16 of stocking stitch; that is, knit one, purl one. So for the ‘3 pearls of white’ etc. later in the pattern, presumably this is actually 6 rows of stocking stitch. There’s no mention of purl in the adult shoes, so were they made in garter stitch, or is stocking stitch implied by the instruction to ‘sew it up on the wrong side’? I don’t know enough about the history of knitting to be sure. I also think I might get rather confused with the ankle fastener, but maybe that’s my dodgy knitting skills.